Rai & Rai: Our deaf-led business and our new bathroom showroom! (BSL)

We are Rai & Rai General Builders Ltd from Peterborough. We provide a wide range of building services, mainly focused on bathrooms and kitchens. We have recently opened a bathroom showroom in Whittlesey called Rai & Rai Bathrooms, where we now sell products, tiles and provide a design and fitting service. 

We are both profoundly deaf BSL users along with most of our fitting team. 

We provide building services, mainly focused on bathroom and kitchens with a bathroom showroom selling products and tiles. We pride ourselves in bespoke, high quality bathrooms which stand out from the rest!

We set up the business in 2019 after working for a few years as self employed builders. We have always worked in the building industry and have a passion to focus on the finer details some installers just miss. 

We therefore developed a passion to set up our own business to show people that deaf people can achieve anything they want to! We also wanted to be able to give other deaf people employment where they can fully communicate with their managers and colleagues. 

We have many customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and other companies we work with who are all hearing and don’t use BSL so of course this is challenging.

However, Access to Work supports us to maintain great relationships with them through BSL Interpreters. Tasks can sometimes take longer due to interpreting and translation so we know we have to work extra hard! 

The best thing about having our own business would be being able to make decisions and move things forward quickly, without having to wait for another person. Also, with everyone in the company being deaf it means we have direct communication with all the staff and can deal with situations promptly. 

The recent set up of our bathroom showroom has got to be a particular highlight, it was also the most exhausting! It was something we had dreamt of doing for a long time as it works nicely alongside our current installation team. We are proud to be offering something different in the way of bathroom design and quality of products. 

We have a small pool of specialist BSL Interpreters so hearing people are able to access all of our staff and services at any time. We are of course accessible for deaf customers and we have BSL Interpreters for our one hearing member of the team who is currently undertaking their BSL level one. 

A normal ‘working day’ for us is quite varied. It involves home visits to quote for new work, meetings with manufacturers, suppliers and other professionals we work alongside, meeting customers in our showroom, working alongside the installation team, answering queries from new and current customers, dealing with the accounts, payroll, and staff queries.  

Going forwards we would like to continue to expand our business, employ more people and cover a wider area. 

The Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Whittlesey and Councillors, are featured in the header photograph as they opened the showroom officially on 8th December! 

You can find Rai&Rai on Facebook and Instagram: 

Rai&Rai Bathrooms 

Rai&Rai General Builders Ltd

www.rai-builders.com